Command to remove all npm modules globally

For those using Windows, the easiest way to remove all globally installed npm packages is to delete the contents of:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\npm

You can get there quickly by typing %appdata%/npm in either the explorer, run prompt, or from the start menu.

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

sudo npm list -g --depth=0. | awk -F ' ' '{print $2}' | awk -F '@' '{print $1}' | sudo xargs npm remove -g 

worked for me

• sudo npm list -g --depth=0. lists all top level installed
• awk -F ' ' '{print $2}' gets rid of ├──
• awk -F '@' '{print $1}' gets the part before '@'
• sudo xargs npm remove -g removes the package globally

For those using Powershell:

npm -gp ls --depth=0 | ForEach-Object { Get-Item $_ } | Where { $_.Name -ne 'npm' } | ForEach-Object { npm rm -g $_.Name } 

To clear the cache:

npm cache clear 

Just switch into your %appdata%/npm directory and run the following...

for package in `ls node_modules`; do npm uninstall $package; done; 

EDIT: This command breaks with npm 3.3.6 (Node 5.0). I'm now using the following Bash command, which I've mapped to npm_uninstall_all in my .bashrc file:

npm uninstall `ls -1 node_modules | tr '/\n' ' '` 

Added bonus? it's way faster!

https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/10187

How do you uninstall all dependencies listed in package.json (NPM)?

If you would like to remove all the packages that you have installed, you can use the npm -g ls command to find them, and then npm -g rm to remove them.

in windows go to "C:\Users{username}\AppData\Roaming" directory and manually remove npm folder

If you have jq installed, you can go even without grep/awk/sed:

npm ls -g --json --depth=0 | jq -r '.dependencies|keys-["npm"]|join("\n")' | xargs npm rm -g 

On Debian and derived you can install jq with:

sudo apt-get install jq 

All you done good job. This is combined suggestions in to one line code.

npm rm -g `npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | tr '/\n' ' '` 

What is different? Uninstall will be done in single command like: npm rm -g *** *** ***

OS not specified by OP. For Windows, this script can be used to nuke the local and the user's global modules and cache.

I noticed on linux that the global root is truly global to the system instead of the given user. So deleting the global root might not be a good idea for a shared system. That aside, I can port the script to bash if interested.

For Windows, save to a cmd file to run.

@ECHO OFF SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion SETLOCAL EnableExtensions SET /A ecode=0 :: verify SET /P conf="About to delete all global and local npm modules and clear the npm cache. Continue (y/[n])? IF /I NOT "%conf%"=="y" ( ECHO operation aborted SET /A ecode=!ecode!+1 GOTO END ) :: wipe global and local npm root FOR %%a IN ("" "-g") DO ( :: get root path into var SET cmd=npm root %%~a FOR /f "usebackq tokens=*" %%r IN (`!cmd!`) DO (SET npm_root=%%r) :: paranoid ECHO validating module path "!npm_root!" IF "!npm_root:~-12!"=="node_modules" ( IF NOT EXIST "!npm_root!" ( ECHO npm root does not exist "!npm_root!" ) ELSE ( ECHO deleting "!npm_root!" ... :: delete RMDIR /S /Q "!npm_root!" ) ) ELSE ( ECHO suspicious npm root, ignoring "!npm_root!" ) ) :: clear the cache ECHO clearing the npm cache ... call npm cache clean :: done ECHO done :END ENDLOCAL & EXIT /b %ecode% 

For yarn global

nano ~/.config/yarn/global/package.json <Manually remove all packages from package.json> yarn global add 

Or, if you don't care about what is actually inside package.json

echo {} > ~/.config/yarn/global/package.json && yarn global add 

This should apply to NPM too, but I am not exactly sure where NPM global is stored.

For a more manual approach that doesn't involve an file explorers, doesn't care where the installation is, is very unlikely to break at a later date, and is 100% cross-platform compatible, and feels a lot safer because of the extra steps, use this one.

• npm ls -g --depth=0
• Copy output
• Paste into favorite code editor (I use vsCode. Great multi-cursor editing)
• Check for any packages you'd like to keep (nodemon, yarn, to name a few) Remove those lines
• Remove every instance of +-- or other line decorators
• Remove all the version information (eg '@2.11.4')
• Put all items on same line, space separated
• Add npm uninstall -g to beginning of that one line.
  • Mine looks like npm uninstall -g @angular/cli @vue/cli express-generator jest mocha typescript bindings nan nodemon yarn, but I didn't install many packages globally on this machine.
• Copy line
• Paste in terminal, hit enter if not already added from the copy/paste
• Look for any errors in the terminal.
• Check npm ls -g to make sure it's complete. If something got reinstalled, rinse and repeat

The other cli-only approaches are great for computer administrators doing something for 100 near-identical computers at once from the same ssh, or maybe a Puppet thing. But if you're only doing this once, or even 5 times over the course of a year, this is much easier.

You can locate your all installed npm packages at the location:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\npm 

and delete the content of npm which you want to remove.

If AppData is not showing, it means it is hidden and you can go to View in file explorer and checked the Hidden items then there you can see all the hidden folders.

For Windows:

rmdir /s /q "%appdata%/npm" 

Well if you are on windows, and want to remove/uninstall all node_modules then you need to do following steps.

1. Go to windows command prompt
2. Navigate to node_modules directory (Not inside node_modules folder)

3. Type below command and give it for 1-2 minutes it will uninstall all directories inside node_module

    rmdir /s /q node_modules 

Hope this will help some one on windows

if you have Intellij Webstorm you can use its built-in graphical package manager.

open it as root and create an emtpy project. go to

File > Settings > Language and Frameworks > Node.js and NPM

there you will see all the installed packages. Uninstalling is easy, you can select and deselect any package you want to uninstall, Ctrl+a woks as well.

Simply use below for MAC,

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/{bin/{node,npm},lib/node_modules/npm,lib/node,share/man//node.}

npm list -g 

will show you the location of globally installed packages.

If you want to output them to a file:
npm list -g > ~/Desktop/npmoutputs.txt

npm rm -g 

will remove them

Try this and tell me what you think

npx npkill 

npm ls -gp | awk -F/ '/node_modules/&&!/node_modules.*node_modules/&&!/npm/{print $NF}' | xargs npm rm -g 

Use this code to uninstall any package:

npm rm -g <package_name> 

Since this is the top answer in search I'm posting this here as it was the solution I used in the past to clean the computer switching laptops.

cd ~/Documents # or where you keep your projects find . -name "node_modules" -exec rm -rf '{}' + 

source: https://winsmarts.com/delete-all-node-modules-folders-recursively-on-windows-edcc9a9c079e

Here is a more elegant solution that I tried where I let npm do all the work for me.

# On Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon # First navigate to where your global packages are installed. $ npm root # returns /where/your/node_modules/folder/is $ cd /where/your/node_modules/folder/is # i.e for me it was cd /home/user/.npm-packages/lib/node_modules 

Then if you do npm uninstall or npm remove these modules will be treated as if they were normal dependencies of a project. It even generates a package-lock.json file when it is done:

$ npm remove <package-name> # you may need sudo if it was installed using sudo 

If you have have MSYS for Windows:

rm -rf ${APPDATA//\\/\/}/npm 

The npm README.md states:

If you would like to remove all the packages that you have installed, then you can use the npm ls command to find them, and then npm rm to remove them.

To remove cruft left behind by npm 0.x, you can use the included clean-old.sh script file. You can run it conveniently like this:

 npm explore npm -g -- sh scripts/clean-old.sh 

In macOS, I believe you can simply delete the .npm-global folder in your User directory.

.npm and .npm-global folders in macOS User directory:

sudo npm uninstall npm -g 

Or, if that fails, get the npm source code, and do:

sudo make uninstall 

To remove everything npm-related manually:

rm -rf /usr/local/{lib/node{,/.npm,_modules},bin,share/man}/npm* 

If you're using NVM for Windows, you need to delete all the modules that you don't want inside node_modules of the Node.js with the version that contains the global modules you want to remove. Do not remove corepack and npm packages as they are necessary for Node.js.

The folder can be located in:

• %USERPROFILE%\.nvm\{version}\node_modules.

  • %USERPROFILE% is your user folder.
  • {version} is the version of Node.js where you want to delete its global modules.

  Example: C:\Users\Cappuccino\.nvm\19.8.1\node_modules.

• {installationPath}\{version}\node_modules.

  • {installationPath} is where you have installed NVM for Windows.
  • {version} is the version of Node.js where you want to delete its global modules. Example: D:\Programs\NVM\v19.8.1\node_modules.

sed solution

npm -gp ls | sed -r '/npm$|(node_modules.*){2,}/d; s:.*/([^/]+)$:\1:g' | xargs npm rm -g